WEEK     JOB: TATTOOIST/PIERCER

LOCATION: TORONTO, ONTARIO

EMPLOYER: NEW TRIBE TATTOOING AND PIERCING

WAGE: 25–80 PERCENT OF TATTOO COST

INDUSTRY IQ:

• The five most popular tattoo designs are tribal designs, stars, angels, crosses, and wings (surprisingly, hearts with MOM didn’t make the cut).

• 14 percent of Americans are estimated to have tattoos.

• To become a licensed tattoo artist you need to apprentice and build a portfolio (perhaps even practice on yourself or some voluntary livestock). Raw talent helps too.

• Tattooing in the Western world became popular after sailors began returning home from areas such as Polynesia with body art.

WHAT I LEARNED: Never get a “normal” piercing.

Jonny, New Tribe’s head piercer, was a big, bald, heavily tattooed, forty-one-year-old who’d been piercing at the shop for twelve years. I’d been hanging out with Jonny all afternoon, helping to set up, take down, and clean his piercing station. After I watched him put in a tongue ring, a nipple ring, and a nose ring, I asked, “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve pierced?”

“Earlobes,” he plainly stated.

“Earlobes?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Once you’ve held a couple dozen penises in your hand, earlobes are just weird.”